Jill Biden hasn’t shared any moments, good or bad, about her time in the White House — until now.
Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, announced Wednesday that the former first lady will release her memoir, “View from the East Wing,” on June 2. The book promises a look at former President Joe Biden’s abrupt end to his 2024 reelection campaign against Donald Trump, a rematch of the pair’s 2020 presidential race.
Biden, who was a political spouse for nearly 50 years, has yet to publicly discuss the conclusion of her husband’s political career, but is turning to print and paper to break her silence.
The former first lady also announced her memoir’s launch in an Instagram video, saying it is time to “set the record straight.”
What is the former first lady’s memoir about?
The book is a “reflection of my four years as first lady,” Biden told The Associated Press, adding that the writing process was a healing experience.
“It was kind of cathartic for me to write it, and I wrote about all the, you know, sometimes painful — but other times, most of it, really beautiful moments that Joe and I shared during his presidency,” she said.
“Parts of this story have been told. But not all of it,” Biden said in the video. “I share the good moments that lifted me, and the difficult ones that challenged me.”
She shares she also reflects on the end of the administration. “When Joe made the unprecedented decision not to seek reelection and pass the torch. What that moment meant for our family and for me personally. After years of public service together.”
The memoir offers a look inside her tenure during a distinctive era in U.S. history, beginning during the COVID-19 pandemic and in “the shadow” of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol, according to the publisher.
The publisher noted that she held a paying job outside the White House while her husband was in office, continuing her work as a professor at a community college nearby.
“View from the East Wing” also details Biden’s experiences behind the scenes, “from Camp David to Air Force One, from grading papers in the Rose Garden to witnessing the abrupt end of her husband’s bid for reelection.”
This is not Biden’s first book. She published a memoir, “Where the Light Enters,” in 2019 and has authored three children’s books.
Other first lady memoirs
Biden joins a lineage of first ladies who have documented their White House tenures. Notable recent memoirs include:
- Melania Trump: “Melania”
- Michelle Obama: “Becoming”
- Laura Bush: “Spoken from the Heart”
- Hillary Clinton: “Living History”
- Barbara Bush: “Barbara Bush: A Memoir”
- Nancy Reagan: “My Turn: The Memoirs of Nancy Reagan”
- Rosalynn Carter: “First Lady from Plains”
- Betty Ford: “The Times of My Life”
- Lady Bird Johnson: “Lady Bird Johnson, A White House Diary”